Saturday, January 31, 2015

Katie Jay posted: "Children enter foster care because they are in danger. A child’s safety should be the first priority in any child welfare system, shouldn’t it? As a lawyer, I’ve been examining the role the judicial system plays in making sure children remain safe once.”

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A child’s safety should be the first priority in any child welfare system, shouldn’t it? As a lawyer, I’ve been examining the role the judicial system plays in making sure children remain safe once they have been removed from danger.

But when I look around at what our judicial system is actually doing, it becomes clear that our courts too often favor a parent’s right to autonomy over a child’s right to safety.

I don’t know why I am surprised. To give some legal background, our constitution is a “negative rights” instrument, which means that it obliges our government to not interfere with our lives unless necessary. So a parent’s right to privacy in how she raises her family is legally protected.

Friday, January 30, 2015

Attachment is the process of of forming emotional bonds between parent and child. For healthy emotional development throughout life, the child must attach to her parents, but it is just as true that the parent has to attach to the child. Attachment is not necessarily automatic with children adopted past infancy, but attachment can be taught and learned, and there are activities and attachment parenting techniques that can help both children and parents bond.

Creating a Family has extensive resources on attachment in adoption. A few we think you will find particularly helpful are:

Thursday, January 29, 2015

After weighing into the Elgin Marbles controversy and the imprisonment of journalists in Egypt, Amal Clooney is to step into another high-profile case – the Armenian genocide.

A century on from the 1915 genocide, in which up to 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks, the newly wed wife of George Clooney will be part of a legal team representing Armenia in a case involving denial of the genocide by a Turkish politician.

Dogu Perincek was found guilty by a Swiss court in 2008 of denying, during a visit to Switzerland, that the genocide ever took place.

Mr Perincek, from the Left-wing Turkish Workers’ Party, called the genocide "an international lie" and was fined by the court in Switzerland.

He appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which ruled in Dec 2013 that Switzerland had violated his right to free expression.

That appeal is now being challenged by Armenia, with the case to be heard by the Strasbourg court’s 17-member Grand Chamber. The first hearing has been scheduled for Jan 28.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A six-month-old boy became the seventh member of an Armenian family on Monday to die after a killing spree blamed on a Russian soldier that has strained ties between Moscow and Yerevan.

Armenian law enforcement officials say the soldier, Valery Permyakov, who is serving at a Russian military base in the tiny Caucasus nation, is their main suspect after military uniform boots with his name on them were found at the site where six members of the Avetisyan family were killed last week.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

What an excellent article! It is a hard read. Very raw and unvarnished. It is a truth many families live (and survive too!). We need to hear a balance of the great and really crappy parts of family building. It's not fairy tale, it's messy and its life in the trenches sometimes. What are your thoughts?

Preface: This is not a how-to-parent-older-adopted-kids blog post. This is not a why-kids-of-trauma-inflict-trauma post. This is not even a this-is-what-life-is-like-with-trauma-kids post. This is not a feel-sorry-for-us or toot-our-own-horns post. It’s most definitely not a rainbows and unicorns post. However, I want to stress that—no matter how hard adoption can be or sometimes is, I still believe in it. I’ve got an incredible husband and a slew of kids I call my own who agree. So this is not an anti-adoption post. On the contrary, this is a RALLY CRY for those adoptive parents in the trenches answering the call that others refuse to hear, being judged, shunned, and persecuted for their already very lonely and difficult road. This is a no-holds-barred, bare-it-all solidarity-seeking attempt. This is for you, adoptive parents of trauma kids, because you are most definitely NOT alone.

So I’m sitting here spitting nails. I’ll be honest about that from the get-go. And I’m typing a hundred miles a minute. And probably not going to edit a whole lot. BECAUSE ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. There is not a week that goes by that I do not receive multiple emails, phone calls, Facebook messages, or texts either from someone currently in the trenches or someone who knows someone who is. They’re at their wit’s end. They can’t take much more. They’re lonely. Grieved. And scared. And while I could spend forever trying to explain to those NOT in the trenches what it’s like down in the trenches, I’m not going to waste my time. Because the truth is, as you all know, that unless you have lived it, you will probably never get it. You just won’t. Oh, how we parents of trauma kids wish that weren’t so.

And if you’re reading this because your friend or family member passed it along, now’s your chance to erase your presumptions and shred your judgments and just take a listen and try to understand.

But if you’re reading this and already nodding, I’m trusting that you already get it. That you know what it’s like to step out of your comfortable American Christianity and choose one of the unwanted ones. The older, “broken” kids whom no one else said YES to. You know what it’s like to have that kind of compassion, faith, and willingness, that open heart and open home, that open-to-come-what-may. You know what it’s like to love the unlovable. To say yes to a call from God that no one else wants to hear or acknowledge. To take in a child of trauma. And you know what it’s like to be hated—and all but destroyed—by that child in return.

For better or for worse, we Americans have some very unique habits. Baseball caps and fanny packs aren’t the only giveaways. So Yahoo Travel found out what foreigners think are our top tells. Here are 13 ways to spot an American anywhere in the world.

1. We’re the only ones wearing white athletic socks.

For real. Others around the world mostly wear darker-colored socks. In fact, according to Olivier Magny (French author of Stuff Parisians Like) in Paris, people actually find white socks offensive.

2. We have superwhite, supernice teeth

Un-naturally white, perfectly straight-toothed smiles have “U.S.A.” written all over them. Ricky Gervais, the English comic known for his notoriously bad imperfect teeth (before he became famous in American and whitened them) even says so: “Americans, they are obsessed with perfect teeth.” Whereas others, like the Brits, are more comfortable having teeth with “character.” Flossing also isn’t a thing in the rest of the world like it is here.

Friday, January 9, 2015

Many frustrated parents regretfully feel as though all of the years that their child has spent in their safe, loving home has not made much of a positive impact on the child. This can leave parents feeling bewildered and incompetent. When I talk with parents about how their child’s behaviors are being driven by their earliest life experiences, many are overwhelmed by that idea that everything they have done to provide a safe and loving family has not helped their child let go of those earliest traumas. Despite years of “safe mom” behaviors, the child’s brain still believes “moms aren’t safe” or “moms leave.” Despite years of never going hungry, a full pantry, and never being told “no” to food, the child’s brain still believes “I’ll never get food again” or “Hungry = Starving”. Parents start to feel hopeless and helpless. When will the child FINALLY believe they are safe? Not going to go hungry? Parents feel justifiably skeptical when I attempt to convince them that their 9 year-old child’s meltdown over being told “no” to a snack right before dinner triggers the part in their brain that believes “I’ll never get food again.” How can this be possibly true when the child has not gone without food for seven years AND mom is in the middle of cooking dinner- an obvious sign that food will be plentifully available very shortly.

Traumatic experiences, even the earliest and preverbal traumatic experiences, remain stored in our children’s brains. The normal information processing system that stores memories in the appropriate places in our brain is thwarted by the cascade of hormones and neurochemicals that are released during a traumatic or frightening experience. The memory- along with the images, feelings, and body sensations, remain literally frozen in their nervous system.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Register now for a FREE Expert Q&A Webinar

How can you and your family prepare to become parents and relatives to a child of a different race? How do you talk about race and adoption as your child grows? How do you talk about racism and your child's safety in a world that will see and make presumptions based on his or her skin color? If you adopted internationally, how do you balance and integrate birth culture exploration with discussion about your child’s everyday life as a hyphenated American? Beth Hall, co-author of Inside Transracial Adoption and founder of Pact, An Adoption Alliance, leads a discussion about parenting a child adopted transracially. Join us to ask your questions!

As a mom of three kids, two of whom have special needs (one has Down Syndrome and one is legally blind), I’m well aware that vacation traveling with small children — especially those with disabilities — is no walk in the park. But the attention mongering schemes of Elit Kirschenbaum, who took to Twitter last week lambasting a United Airways flight attendant for refusing to allow her to hold her disabled three year old daughter on her lap during take off, make me want to puke.

“She told us that we had to make her sit. And I said to her, ‘I would give my left arm to make her sit, of course I want to have her sit but she just can’t do it,” Kirschenbaum recently told CBS news.

Monday, January 5, 2015

In September 2013 Reuters shocked the world by exposing the dangerous practice of re-homing adopted children. The five-part series called "The Child Exchange" described adoptive parents giving the adopted children that they were unable to handle to total strangers found online. Many of the children were from Russia and were described as presenting a danger to their adoptive families and, in some cases, were given to unsavory people and pedophiles.

Dan Rather's recent two-hour AXS-TV report, "Unwanted Children: the Shameful Side of International Adoption" featured children adopted from India and Ethiopia who were abandoned by adopters, some after just three months, some after seven years. Some had been adopted by a couple who had been lauded for adopting 28 children, many from Ethiopia. They reportedly abused some and abandoned eight.

Rather also interviewed single mother and best-selling author Joyce Maynard. She sees herself now as having been foster mother to the two Ethiopian girls she adopted and promised to love and care for forever.

There are multiple reasons for disrupted international adoptions, primarily from Russia and Ethiopia. First, many adopt internationally because they feel unprepared to deal with the special needs of children coming from foster care.

Orphanages provide bios of children that are often incomplete, inaccurate, and downplay problems. The descriptions are accompanied by photos and the prospective adopters begin to feel love for the child and talk about bringing "their child" home. Adoption agencies say that adopters hear what they want to hear. Adopters say that because of misrepresentations they get "more than they signed up for" and are prepared to deal with.

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Robin Sizemore, Executive Director of Hopscotch Adoptions Inc, was recognized in 2012 by the Winston-Salem Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc as a person who has "Transform Lives and Impacted the Community". Among five other recipients, Robin Sizemore, was recognized in the area of "International Awareness" for her work and advocacy of children through international adoption and aid. Robin was also the recipient of the "Angels in Adoption" award in 2008, in recognition of her service to children since 1995.